How Much Did Fox’s MacCallum Look Before Falsely Accusing Obama Of ‘Not Saying Boo’ About Sony Terror Threat?

Fox’s Martha MacCallum used Sony’s decision not to release its film, The Interview, as an excuse to attack President Obama for not urging Americans to avoid overreacting to terror threats. Unfortunately for MacCallum’s credibility, Obama had spoken out, three hours before her live show.

As you’ve probably heard, Sony decided not to release The Interview because of threatened terror attacks – which came on top of a hack attack that was believed to have been precipitated by the studio’s comedy about assassinating North Korea’s leader.

There are lots of intriguing issues raised here. But MacCallum, guest hosting The Kelly File last night, seemed most interested in how to use them against President Obama.

MacCallum was helped along in that regard by her guest, Buck Sexton of Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. In his first comments, Sexton said, “This is something that requires a robust and dedicated response from the White House. I’m not sure we’re going to get it, though.”

MacCallum helped validate the thought. Wrinkling up her nose, she said, “So far, we haven’t heard boo from the White House.I mean, you might expect — when you think about after 9/11, and the concerns that there would be further threats — the message was always go live your life, do what you’re going to do, go to the movies, go shopping.”

You have to wonder how hard MacCallum tried to find out what the White House had done. As Mediaite's Matt Wilstein pointed out, Obama had already spoken out on ABC News, nearly three hours before:

The cyberattack is very serious. We’re investigating it seriously,” the president said. “We’ll be vigilant. If we see something that we think is serious and credible, then we’ll alert the public, but for now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies.”

Media Matters noted that CNN had also reported Obama’s comments, about two hours before The Kelly File.

Of course, MacCallum had more bogus excuses to make the Sony threat Obama’s fault:

We’ve heard so much about our invasion of privacy, you know that the NSA is everywhere, that they’re watching everything. They don’t seem to have any clue where this came from.

No clue? Yesterday, also before The Kelly File aired, The New York Times printed a lot of details about what the Obama administration has found out about the attack and how they concluded it was state-sponsored by North Korea. The Times reported that the hacking left a "long forensic trail" and that "there are still differences of opinion over whether North Korea was aided by Sony insiders with knowledge of the company’s computer systems, senior administration officials said." That sounds like a lot of clues to me.

Then, in the next segment, with media critic Howard Kurtz, MacCallum reiterated her false attack:

I find it curious because there are so many people who are outraged in this country about the involvement of government in private companies… and yet… we haven’t heard from the government, ‘Look, go about your lives, don’t let this cow you.’

MacCallum also complained, “I heard that two government officials were consulted on this movie and said, ‘We don’t have a problem with the fact that Kim Jong-Un’s head blows up at the end of the movie. We’re OK with it.’ Now they don’t have too much to say about the whole thing.”

Did MacCallum bother to confirm what she “heard” about the two government officials? And in what capacity they were consulted? Was it for, say, realism or were they consulted to give their blessing on the subject matter?”

Not surprisingly, Kurtz didn’t have a problem with this unsourced, unverified and non-specific speculation.